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Happy diversion

I love working with WordPress. I also love blogging with WordPress, and wanted a “just-for-fun” place to do it, so I created the Slacker Foodie blog. Aimed at people who love fresh, healthy, “real” food and interesting flavors – but not necessarily spending hours in the kitchen – Slacker Foodie is where I share the tips, recipes and recommendations I’ve developed as I search out simpler, better ways of preparing food.

As a developer, I can create custom WordPress themes or customize existing themes that others have developed. With Slacker Foodie, my plan was to pick a great theme and leave it alone, focusing instead on writing and photography. To maximize features and minimize the hassle of adding the extras that most bloggers and blog readers enjoy, I installed the StudioPress Genesis framework. I chose StudioPress’s Scribble theme because its layout and design was fairly close to what I had in mind for Slacker Foodie. I have tinkered with the code only a little, making an already great theme into one that fits my needs perfectly.

I’ve added features that maximize the often limited time I can spend on the blog. When I publish a post, an excerpt is automatically sent to Facebook and Twitter, helping to draw in traffic. I keep photography simple with an excellent camera phone and an app with in-camera editing; the app allows me to save photos to a Dropbox folder for easy access when blogging. I add recommendations for books and kitchen equipment to my Amazon store as I blog, including notes about my particular experience. In addition to the items featured on specific posts, readers can visit a store page to see all of my recommendations, and add them to their Amazon shopping cart without leaving the blog.

I really enjoy having a creative outlet to share my experiences and experiments. The combination of WordPress, Genesis and a camera phone all work together to make the experience a hassle-free pleasure.

UPDATE: 10 July 2014 – Although I’d streamlined as much as possible with the Slacker Foodie site, it was still more than I could keep up with given client work and blogging here on the simpler web and elsewhere. I made the decision to shut Slacker Foodie down – at least for now.

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You did a great job of interpreting what I imagined into a real website, which could be difficult since I didn't always have something clear in mind. This intuition is critical particularly when I didn't know exactly what was possible or how to describe the idea I had in mind.